The Wall Street Journal - 08.11.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, November 8, 2019 |A

T

he Trump administration
is heading for a funda-
mental break with the
People’s Republic of
China. The rupture, if it
occurs, will upend almost a half-cen-
tury of Washington’s “engagement”
policies. Twin speeches last month
by Vice President Mike Pence and
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo con-
tained confrontational language
rarely heard from senior American
officials in public.
“America will continue to seek a
fundamental restructuring of our re-
lationship with China,” the vice
president said at a Wilson Center
event on Oct. 24 as he detailed
China’s disturbing behavior during
the past year.

Some argue the vice president’s
talk didn’t differ substantively from
his groundbreaking October 2018
speech, but these observers fail to see
that in the face of Beijing’s refusal to
respond to American initiatives, Mr.
Pence was patiently building the case
for stern U.S. actions.
Moreover, the vice president’s
thematic repetition was itself impor-
tant. It suggested that the adminis-
tration’s approach, first broadly ar-
ticulated in the December 2017
National Security Strategy, had hard-
ened. That document ditched the
long-used “friend” and “partner” la-
bels. Instead it called China—and its
de facto ally Russia—“revisionist
powers” and “rivals.”

Pence and Pompeo are

making the case for a new

approach that will outlast

this administration.

The Great Confrontation With China

At a Hudson Institute dinner last

Wednesday, Mr. Pompeo spoke even

more candidly: “It is no longer real-

istic to ignore the fundamental dif-

ferences between our two systems

and the impact...those systems

have on American national security.”

China’s ruling elite, he said, belong

to “a Marxist-Leninist party focused

on struggle and international domi-

nation.” We know of Chinese hostil-

ity to the U.S., Mr. Pompeo pointed

out, by listening to “the words of

their leaders.”

Indeed we do. In May, the official

People’s Daily declared a “people’s

war” on the U.S.; Xi Jinping, the

Chinese ruler, has for more than a

decade been dropping hints that

China is the world’s only legitimate

state; and senior Chinese military

officers now speak gleefully in pub-

lic about sinking U.S. Navy vessels

and killing American sailors in the

thousands.

There had long been hope that

the Chinese party-state would be-

come a “responsible stakeholder” in

the international system, as then-

Deputy Secretary of State Robert

Zoellick expressed in 2005. American

policy had been to encourage that

transition and support China’s ruling

class. U.S. presidents sometimes

even rode to the rescue of their Chi-

nese counterparts: Richard Nixon

visited Beijing in 1972 when China

had weakened itself by a yearslong

Cultural Revolution; George H.W.

Bush supported Deng Xiaoping in

1989 in the immediate aftermath of

the Tiananmen massacre; and in

1999, during a Chinese economic

downturn, Bill Clinton negotiated the

deal that allowed Beijing to enter the

World Trade Organization.

These hopes have been dashed as

Mr. Xi has aggressively pursued “the

Chinese Dream,” “the great rejuvena-

tion of the Chinese nation.” He’s been

relentlessly closing off the Chinese

market to foreign competitors by,

among other means, highly discrimi-

natory rule enforcement and prejudi-

cial laws and regulations like the dra-

conian cybersecurity rules scheduled

to take effect Dec. 1.

At the same time Mr. Xi has en-

sured that the state sector is “ad-

vancing.” He is recombining already

large state enterprises back into for-

mal monopolies and duopolies, re-

versing the partial privatization of

earlier years, having the state buy

shares in listed private companies,

shoveling more state subsidies to fa-

vored state businesses, exercising

tighter control over price move-

ments in equity markets, and pursu-

ing development through antitrade

industrial policies such as his Made

in China 2025 initiative.

Mr. Xi is also implementing totali-

tarian controls. A nationwide “social

credit system,” set to begin next

year, will constantly monitor and

score the behavior of individuals and

businesses according to state crite-

ria. Also by 2020, an estimated 626

million cameras will surveil the

country’s citizenry. Worst of all, Mr.

Xi is pursuing horrific campaigns to

rid China of faith and minority iden-

tity with, most notably, mass deten-

tions in concentration camps, de-

struction of churches and mosques,

and organ harvesting from believers

and others.

Mr. Xi, in short, seeks to imple-

ment a new form of Maoism. As a

result of what some call his “great

regression,” China’s strongman is

forcing Washington to adopt a Rea-

gan-like policy of explicit hostility to

the Chinese regime itself.

Mr. Pompeo’s words, as the for-

mer British diplomat and Sinologist

Roger Garside puts it, were “epoch-

defining.” The startling aspect of Mr.

Pompeo’s speech, Mr. Garside says,

isn’t that the secretary of state said

something novel—he didn’t—but

that America’s top diplomat said

what he did in a policy-setting

speech. Mr. Pompeo also indicated

there was more to come in “a series

of sets of remarks.” Perhaps he will

enunciate something like the Long

Telegram of 1946 or the “X Article”

of 1947, George Kennan’s paradigm-

setting thoughts on containing the

Soviet Union.

Chinese leaders seem confident

they can continue to manage Amer-

ica. Many say Beijing is stalling,

waiting for President Trump to be

forced from office. That would be a

mistake. Hostility to China is now so

widespread that whoever wins the

White House next year will probably

continue the Trump administration’s

hard-line approach. Although candi-

dates for the Democratic presiden-

tial nomination have taken potshots

at the White House’s China policy,

establishment figures of the party,

including House Speaker Nancy

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader

Chuck Schumer, have largely sup-

ported Mr. Trump’s approach to

China, especially on tariffs. In May,

for instance, Mr. Schumer urged the

president to “hang tough,” saying,

“Strength is the only way to win

with China.”

China historian Arthur Waldron

of the University of Pennsylvania

says the current period reminds him

of the American Civil War. After the

carnage of the Battle of the Wilder-

ness, an indecisive May 1864 strug-

gle near Fredericksburg, Va., Confed-

erate generals expected Ulysses S.

Grant, the new commander of the

Union Army, to turn back north to

the safety of Washington, as his pre-

decessors had done after battles. But

Grant, to the cheers of his soldiers,

turned south—and started a series

of ferocious engagements that led to

victory in the war within a year.

The Trump administration has

turned east. “It’s not past,” Mr. Wal-

dron says of Grant and his deter-

mined campaign to end the South’s

rebellion. “The Chinese should grasp

that 1864 is now.”

Mr. Chang is author of “The Com-

ing Collapse of China.”

By Gordon G. Chang

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; ASSOCIATED PRESS

Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo speaking on China.

OPINION

Universal Health Care Makes Politics Sick

London
Elizabeth Warren
is making social-
ized health care
her signature cam-
paign issue. Were
British politicians
not embroiled in
their own election
season, they might
be weighing in
with a question
about this: Is she insane?
Britain’s political class knows all
too well the perils of a state-run
health system. And I don’t mean the
abysmal health outcomes the U.K.’s
National Health Service delivers—
cancer survival rates that lag far be-
hind other European countries with
more market-oriented health sys-
tems, winter crises, shortages of
doctors and nurses, rationing and
interminable waiting times.
Rather, it’s worth contemplating
the ways state-run health care
strangles a country’s politics like a
python suffocating a pig. As soon as
the government takes on full re-
sponsibility for health-care provi-
sion, health-care provision becomes
political. And given the importance
voters quite naturally place on their

own health, health-care politics be-

comes the worst sort: emotionally

fraught and inescapable. Consider

three of the myriad ways this dis-

torts British political life.

First, no amount of money is ever

enough.

Ms. Warren seems to think that

claiming her plan would save the

U.S. economy money in aggregate is

an advantage. Heck no. This is the

one thing Britain’s NHS does

“right,” and voters hate it.

Part of America’s health crisis,

we’re often told, is that we spend

too much on care—nearly 17% of

gross domestic product in 2018, ac-

cording to the Organization for Eco-

nomic Cooperation and Develop-

ment. The U.K. keeps its own

spending at 9.8% of GDP, a smaller

proportion than Germany and

France (11.2% each).

Voters don’t view this as a virtue,

which is why U.K. politicians of all

parties face constant demands to

boost spending on the NHS. That

spending has grown well in excess

of the rate of inflation in recent

years, crowding out spending on ev-

erything else. Politicians get into

the game because they want to exer-

cise the power of the purse. Social-

ized medicine sucks the fun right

out of that.

Second, when the government

runs health care, every political

question boils down to health care.

The NHS overshadows British

political life in ways outsiders

might find hard to fathom. For in-

stance, Brexit policy would seem to

be the natural—and single—focus

for the election campaign that for-

mally started on Wednesday. Yet

the NHS already has intruded, with

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn trad-

ing barbs over who would offer

more funding to the perennially

cash-strapped service.

The NHS has shaped the debate

over Brexit itself. Mr. Johnson cam-

paigned for Brexit in the 2016 refer-

endum from the back seat of a bus

emblazoned with a pledge to divert

an additional £350 million a week to

the NHS—£18.2 billion a year, or

nearly 1% of GDP.

Mr. Corbyn now campaigns

against Mr. Johnson by warning that

a post-Brexit trade deal with Amer-

ica would sell off the NHS to the

U.S. He can even put a number of

sorts on this alleged danger—an ad-

ditional £500 million a week Labour

claims the NHS would have to spend

on pharmaceuticals if a trade deal

reformed the process by which the

service negotiates drug prices. The

most important constitutional de-

bate in Britain in generations is be-

ing fought over... health care?

Third, and worst of all for a poli-

tician, to be the leader of a govern-

ment that manages health care is to

be personally responsible for every

sick patient in the country. Every

single one.

Mr. Johnson’s nascent election

campaign hit the shoals in an East

London hospital in September. Omar

Salem, a Labour Party activist

whose daughter had recently been

admitted to the hospital Mr. John-

son was visiting for a photo-op, ac-

costed the prime minister with a

complaint about how “there are not

enough people on this ward—there

are not enough doctors, there’s not

enough nurses, it’s not well-orga-

nized enough.”

Antagonistic operative or not, Mr.

Salem’s complaint rang true to any-

one who has ever spent time in a

British hospital. And how could Mr.

Johnson argue he’s not responsible

when the government he leads is in

charge of apportioning scarce

health-care resources?

Nationalizing health care nation-

alizes bad outcomes, in every sense.

Botched care—deadly cancers gone

undetected, births gone wrong, au-

tistic patients fatally mistreated—

becomes national news because

health care is national policy. Voters

then expect to hold their politicians

accountable for their doctors’ mis-

takes. Imagine one big rolling VA

scandal coupled with the politiciza-

tion of every instance of medical

malpractice, and you get a flavor of

what it’s like to read a British news-

paper every morning.

Seven decades into their own

misadventure in socialized medi-

cine, British pols have little choice

but to labor in this salt mine. Why

any American politician would vol-

unteer to do so is a mystery for the

ages.

Why would a president or

prime minister want to be

responsible for every single

patient in the country?

POLITICAL
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Labor Sides With Big Oil in a Feud With Pittsburgh’s Mayor

Pittsburgh

M

ayor Bill Peduto has faced a
fierce backlash since he an-
nounced at last week’s Cli-
mate Action Summit that he opposes
any new petrochemical companies
coming to Western Pennsylvania. La-
bor unions, civic leaders and even the
mayor’s closest political ally have
taken him to task.
“When you make a comment that
can clearly hurt the advancement of
a region and their ability to feed their
family and have a better life, that’s
when it becomes an issue for us,”
said Darrin Kelly, the city firefighter
who heads the Allegheny County La-
bor Council. “I’m going to be very vo-

cal on behalf of the working men and

women to protect them, OK?...If

they’re attacking our way of life, I’m

going to come after them.”

The battle is a microcosm of what

is happening nationally: Big-city

Democratic mayors are aligning

themselves with leftist local officials

and environmental activists to re-

nounce disfavored industries. It also

exposes the Democrats’ deep chal-

lenges with blue-collar voters. In

both Western Pennsylvania and the

Scranton area, the shale industry is

opening up prosperity not seen for

two generations—and inflaming cli-

mate zealots. “A Democrat cannot

win Pennsylvania without voter sup-

port from those two regions,” said

Mike Mikus, a strategist who con-

sulted for Democratic Gov. Tom

Wolf’s re-election campaign last year.

“And you can’t win the presidency as

a Democrat if you lose Pennsylvania.”

The oddity of the latest dustup is

that there are no petrochemical

plants in Pittsburgh. The build-out in

the area is in Beaver County, to the

northwest, where the massive $6 bil-

lion Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemi-

cals Complex is under construction

and where Exxon may build another

nearby. Building the Shell plant is ex-

pected to create 6,000 jobs in con-

struction, engineering, chemistry, in-

formation technology and geology.

Once it opens, industry analysts ex-

pect it to employ 600 people perma-

nently and to support twice that

number of jobs elsewhere in the local

economy. The governor calls it a

“game changer” for the region.

Allegheny County Executive Rich

Fitzgerald, Mr. Peduto’s closest ally,

is flabbergasted by the mayor’s oppo-

sition. He bristles at the suggestion

that one can’t favor frackingandmit-

igating climate change. “I believe in

climate change,” he says. “I think it is

absolutely real. Anybody who denies

that I think is not looking at the sci-

ence. What natural gas has done has

been one of those great additions to

lower our carbon footprint.” Natural

gas emits 30% less carbon than oil

and 45% less than coal.

“No city in America has benefited

more from the shale revolution in the

last dozen years than Pittsburgh,”

Mr. Fitzgerald continues. “We were

one of the only regions in the country

that did not experience the Great Re-

cession back in 2008, because that’s

when we discovered the Marcellus

Shale.” He says of Mr. Peduto: “I also

think it gets very tricky when some-

body who represents one-eighth of

the metro region to try to speak for

the 2½ million people that represent

the 10-county metro region.”

Pittsburgh International Airport

last month announced a first-in-the-

country microgrid that will power

the entire airport using natural gas,

drilled on-site by CNX Resources, as

well as solar generation. Nick Delu-

liis, CEO of CNX, says the mayor’s ap-

proach to energy would make such a

project impossible: “I think people

need to understand what the mayor

is saying represents a very small mi-

nority of people in this region and of-

tentimes he is operating in a bit of an

echo chamber. So his views I don’t

think are the working man’s view. It’s

not the building trades’ view, it’s not

manufacturing’s view, and it’s really

not a rational fact-based view.”

Pittsburgh mayors have usually

been Democratic pragmatists, con-

cerned above all with making sure

the streets are safe, the snow gets

plowed and garbage picked up, and

civic leaders are able to develop the

city. Last week a sinkhole in a city

street swallowed a bus as it idled at

a red light. A passenger was treated

for minor injuries, but the mayor’s

reputation was also bruised. The mo-

ment became a local metaphor for

Mr. Peduto’s emphasis on ideology at

the expense of the unpretentious

problems of governing.

“I was elected to represent the cit-

izens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Presi-

dent Trump said in 2017, when he an-

nounced the U.S. withdrawal from the

Paris climate accord. Mr. Peduto

balked at the comparison, yet many

locals see him acting as if he were the

mayor of Paris and not Pittsburgh.

Mr. Kelly said that since he took

on the mayor, he’s been overwhelmed

by calls of support from labor. “We

are not backing down.”

Ms. Zito is a reporter for the

Washington Examiner, a columnist

for the New York Post and a co-au-

thor of “The Great Revolt: Inside the

Populist Coalition Reshaping Ameri-

can Politics.”

By Salena Zito

The dustup is a microcosm

of Democrats’ difficulty

with blue-collar voters,

especially in Pennsylvania.

From “Star Bores” by Michael

Gross in New York magazine, April

29, 1991:

So who will be the stars of the

nineties? According to Steven Lev-

itt’s research, top film, sports, and

TV stars have nothing to worry

about. Elizabeth Taylor and Clint

Eastwood are immune to star sick-

ness. Businessmen, on the other

hand—each year, Levitt’s survey

rates about half a dozen—are falling

victim to new times. In 1987, Donald

TrumphadaQratingof15(com-

pared with 69 for the year’s top-

ranked star, Bill Cosby). In 1990,

Trump’s Q dropped to 12. His nega-

tive Q—a number that represents

how many people know anddislike

him—is more revealing. In 1987, it

was 34. Last year, it soared to 49.

Notable&Quotable